(d) The aim to teach technique. An effective college course may select for its aim the development of the technique of a given subject. It is obvious that a science course governed by this aim will emphasize the laboratory method at the expense of information; that a course in the social sciences will seek to cover less ground but will develop in the student the power to find facts and use them to formulate an intelligent conclusion; that a course in biology will minimize names, classifications and structures, but will emphasize field and laboratory work and the modes of utilizing the data thus discovered. We must repeat the statement made before, that no one can set himself up as the final arbiter of the claims of these contending aims. They are all vitally necessary for a thorough understanding of life's problems. The significant conclusion for teaching is that one or more of these aims must be consciously chosen and that content and method must be determined by them absolutely. Teaching for the sake of teaching consumes time and makes drafts on energy, but it leaves the student no richer in power and with no truer understanding.
Should the aim be modified for varying groups of students?
It is obvious that no general law can be formulated for the adjustment of aims to the needs of students. Teachers have usually found it necessary to change the aim, the content, and the method of a course according to the needs of different classes of students. In one of our colleges science students are required to take two years of Latin. The course offered these young men gives the ordinary drill in grammar, translation, and analysis of Cæsar, Cicero, and Vergil, as well as practice in prose composition in which nondescript and disjointed English sentences, grammatically correct, are turned into incorrect Latin. This description, without any changes whatever, applies also to the course given in the introductory years in Latin to students specializing in the arts. Even a superficial analysis reveals a different set of needs in the two classes of students which can be served only by a corresponding difference in content and mode of teaching. A student who takes French or German because he wants enough mastery of these languages to enable him to read in foreign journals about the progress of his specialty must be given a course which appeals to the eye and minimizes the grammatical and conversational phases of these languages.
There are courses that are foundational and that must therefore be governed by an eclectic aim. In the first course in college physics it is obvious that we must teach the necessary facts of the subject as well as its method. These aspects of the work must be emphasized with equal force for all students; no differentiation need be made for future medical or engineering students or for prospective teachers of the subject in secondary schools. Generally speaking, initial courses in a department are governed by an eclectic aim, but in the advanced courses there must be constant adjustment to the needs of various groups. An eclectic aim can be as effective an instrument in enhancing the quality of teaching as a single, clear-cut aim, provided there is a clear recognition of the relative importance of the ends set up, and provided a definite plan is evolved to attain them.
The aim or aims of a subject or a lesson, once formulated, must always be kept before the students as well as before the teacher. Every pupil must know the ends to be attained in the course he is taking, and as work progresses he must experience a growing realization that the class is moving toward these ends. The subject matter of the course, the method of instruction, the assigned task, now glow with interest which springs from work clearly motivated. The average student plods through his semester from a sense of duty or obedience rather than from a conviction of the worth of both subject matter and method.
Value of clearly defined aims
Not only must the general aim be indicated to the student, but he must also be made acquainted with the specific aim. Where students have been acquainted with the specific task that must be accomplished in a given period, concentration and coöperation with the instructor are easier; the students can, at stages in the lesson, anticipate succeeding steps; their answers have greater relevancy, their thought is more sequential and flows more readily along the path planned by the instructor. A specific aim for each lesson makes for economy, for it is a standard of relevancy for both student and teacher. The student whose answer or observation is irrelevant is asked to recall the aim of the lesson and to judge the pertinence of his contribution. The instructor given to wandering far afield finds that a clearly fixed aim is an aid in keeping him in the prescribed path. Too many college hours, especially in the social sciences, find the instructor beginning with his subject but ending anywhere in the field of human knowledge. These wanderings are entertaining enough, but they dissipate the energies of the students and produce a mental flabbiness already too well developed in the average college student.
Motivation in college teaching
A second factor which contributes much toward the effectiveness of college teaching is the principle of motivation. So long as most of the college course is prescribed, course by course, students will be found pursuing certain studies without an intelligent understanding of their social or mental worth. Ask the student "doing" prescribed logic to explain the value of the course. In friendly or intimate discussion with him, elicit his conception of the utilitarian or disciplinary worth of the prescribed Latin or mathematics in the arts course. He sees no relation between the problems of life and the daily lessons in many of these subjects. He submits to the teacher's attempts to graft this knowledge upon his intellectual stock merely because he has learned that the easiest course is to bend to authority. Instruction in too many college subjects is based, not on intelligent and voluntary attention, but on the discipline maintained by the institution or by the instructor. It is obvious that such instruction is stultifying to the teacher and can never develop in the student a liberal and cultured outlook upon life.
The principle of motivation in teaching seeks to justify to the student the experience that is presented as part of his college course. It is obvious that this motivation need not always be explained in terms of utilitarian values. A student of college age can be made to realize the mental, the cultural, or the inspirational values that justify the prescription of certain courses. The college instructor who tries to motivate courses in the appreciation of music or painting finds no great difficulty in leading his students to an enthusiastic conviction of their inspirational value. It is well worth taking the student into our confidence in these matters of aim and value. We must become more tolerant of the thoughtful student who makes honest inquiry as to the value of any of the presented courses. We must learn to regard such questions as signs of growing seriousness and increasing maturity and not as signs of impertinence. We constantly ask ourselves questions about the round of our daily task; we seek to know thoroughly their uses, their values, their meaning in our lives. Clear conception of use or value in teaching is as vital as it is in life—for what is teaching if not the process of repeating life's experiences?